"Being an activist is the rent we pay for being on the planet." Alice Walker

This URL now hosts Citizen's Rent content from its inception in 2004 and 2005. For new posts, head over to the new and improved Citizen's Rent at http://kbonline.typepad.com/citizensrent. And if you're a fellow blogger with a link to this site, I'd be grateful if you'd update the link there.

So I read in the Washington Post today what are the Bush team "lessons learned" from the last year. Before we look at those lessons, let's look at the the instructional material they had to work with.

Spectacular failure in the effort to privatize social security

Shocking incompetence responding to a natural disaster, Katrina, for
which we had ample warning - after four years of justifying everything
on the basis of making us safer

An exploding deficit and an out of control budget

A popularity rating so low that a rise to 47% is cause for celebration

An economy that looks good on paper (the wealthy's tax returns that is) but hasn't translated into wage stability or increases

The continued presence of over 160,000 American troops in Iraq, with no
end in sight, a rising death toll, and Congress restless to finally
exercise a bit of oversight

The
beginnings of a real anti-war movement, growing loss of support for the
war in Iraq (a clear majority of Americans), and the call for troop
withdrawal from a career Marine, Rep. Murtha

The 9/11 commission assessment that we are no more prepared today
than we were prior to 9/11 to prevent or respond to a terrorist attack

A continuing investigation into the outing of a covert CIA agent
which just might result in the indictment of Bush's own deputy chief of
staff, Karl Rove

Indictment of the Vice President's chief of staff for perjury, lieing to the FBI, and obstruction of justice

The disclosure that the adminstration/Pentagon/CIA is running secret prisons in other countries where prisoners are held secretly and interrogated, some say tortured

The reality that the administration didn't have the muscle necessary to prevent the McCain anti-torture amendment from passing

The constant barrage of questions here at home and across the world, asking about US treatment of detainees

The revelation that Bush authorized, unilaterally and in secret, the wire tapping of US citizens with no warrant or court review

The appellate court's rejection of their position on Jose Padilla and their efforts to hold him without charges as an enemy combatant and to try him in a military court where he would not receive the rights constitutionally granted to American citizens

The loss of support from the religious right that forced Bush to withdraw Harriet Mires' nomination to the Supreme Court

The inability to get Congress to renew the Patriot Act

Now that's largely off the top of my head. No doubt, I missed a few major and untold minor problems that the adminstration faced in 2005. So what have they learned? According to the Washington Post, it's this:

Big initiatives like privatizing social security can't be done during a time of warNice, the way they make this about the war and not about the complete dishonesty of declaring a financial crisis and then proposing a wholesale restructuring of the program such that it doesn't deal with the alleged financial crisis. No surprise that they failed to mention the total unity of the Democrats in Congress or that the expensive 50+ city campaign for privatization was dished only to approved insiders. They might have learned that preaching to the choir is no way to convince the country to risk its most successful social program. Or that the American people are smarter than they think. Or that big initiatives require bi-partisan support.

It's not enough to offer assurances of victory in Iraq. The American people actually want a true accounting of how things are going and a real plan for winning.And yet, we still don't have a plan beyond "as they stand up, we'll stand down". We got one speech with "things haven't gone as smoothly as we hoped" type of language, but still no-one has been held accountable for the grave mistakes made and still we deplete our armed services who fight and sometimes die without the equipment they need to do so as safely as possible. Here are some good Iraq related lessons: Equip the troops. Don't lie to the American people. Take responsibility and hold people accountable. Don't say support the troops and then blame commanders for how the war is going, the troop levels, or the slow pace of training Iraqis. Learn to question your idealogical conventional wisdom, especially if it leads you to risking American lives. Learn the value of internal debate and engage in it. Oh - and stop taking five week vacations when our military is fighting a war and you're the commander in chief - it just doesn't look good. There's so many more lessons to be learned - but I'll leave them to the Juan Cole's among us to point out.

Anger at Bush subsides somewhat when he takes responsibility.Now that's a good lesson. BUT, it's not enough to say your responsible, you actually have to be responsible. Firing Michael Brown at FEMA was a good start. But that's not enough, especially with the recent reports that the Dept. Homeland Security is disfunctional at best and may impede our ability to respond to a domestic crisis.

You can't do anything dramatic unless you have 60 votes.The right way to say this is: "If you're going to make major and substantive changes in the way the government operates and interacts with its citizens, the changes must be bipartisan."

These are the four lessons identified in the WaPo article that the Bush administrion has learned. That's it. And that's not enough. Not given the wealth of material they had to use as a basis for learning their lessons. If they were a class in school, they'd be given a "not proficient" mark and deemed to be part of the failing population of what might be a failing school.

So lit's time for a bit of remediation - what "lessons learned" did they miss?

(I know I'm on hiatus, but this is too important to ignore because I'm busy elsewhere.)

This cannot stand. In ordering the NSA to spy
secretly on America, George Bush has: overturned United States Signals
Intelligence Directive 18, which prohibits domestic spying by the NSA;
violated the federal act which created the FISA court to oversee covert
domestic investigations; and trampled upon the Fourth Amendment
guarantee against warrantless searches. It cannot stand for a day, much
less a month while Congress is in recess.

On Friday, when Sen. Specter said he'd make investigating the
allegations a top priority in January, it was barely possible to
pretend that they might be false. But by Saturday's radio address, when
Bush defended his policy and insisted it would continue, we had entered
a full-blown constitutional crisis. George Bush would love for Congress
to back down from a fight next week, to go home grumbling "Wait until
next year."

Operation Flabbergasted We cannot let that happen. We have to ensure that by Monday, all hell has broken loose in D.C.

Every
Senator needs to know there'll be jolly hell back home if they don't
demand Bush stop it now. The MSM needs to be discussing the
`constitutional crisis.' There has to be a plan immediately to make
this happen. I've got one.

We know that domestic spying by the NSA is Orwellian.
We don't need to wait for panels of experts to declare the obvious,
that Bush's policies violate the Fourth Amendment in the most
fundamental way. Further, it is clear that the White House is panicking over the implications of this leak,
very much as the Reagan White House panicked when the Iran Contra story
broke and they thought impeachment might be looming. Bush's radio address manages to be both offensive and defensive at one and the same time (it reminds one of the cornered Richard Nixon).

We also know that significant numbers of Senators and journalists are
utterly fed up with the Bush administration's record on civil
liberties. Some are positively spoiling for a fight (if you don't
believe me, check out the grilling Terry Moran gave Alberto Gonzales
about torture on Nightline Thursday). So we also know that it's
entirely possible for us, at this moment, to drive this issue home once
and for all, if we can mount a worthy campaign.

The only campaign that would be worthy of this issue, in my opinion,
will be one that produces the biggest fire-storm that Washington has
ever seen. If we do not attempt to take back our country now, then when?

We need both coherent goals and effective methods to make this happen.
There is little time to lose. Fortunately, as we've shown in the past
with internet-based campaigns, things can be organized extremely
quickly if people are willing to do their part.

GOALS

As far as possible, our declared goals must be as clear,
straightforward, plausible, and uncontroversial as possible. I have no
illusions that it will be easy to achieve these goals; George Bush and
friends stonewall almost as a matter of course. But our declared goals
must throw into stark relief the illegality of the administration's
policies and the nature of the constitutional crisis.

I propose that we ask each U.S. Senator to demand that President Bush:

immediately reverse this directive on domestic spying

promise to desist in the future from warrantless spying on Americans

cooperate fully with a bi-partisan investigation of the policy

release the texts of the directives along with the legal opinions they were based on

identify to the Senate all residents of the US who were targets of unconstitutional spying

METHODS

The most important things that need to be done are to

build an ad hoc network to promote this campaign, to include
blogs, activist groups, grassroot organizations, local and state
Democratic Party organizations, and some media darlings like Randi
Rhodes

contact Senators to make the above requests

contact journalists covering Washington to alert them to the
campaign and to request full coverage of the constitutional crisis that
the President has provoked

I've arranged them in the order that they need to be addressed. We will
want to have the main outlines of a network in place by late Sunday, if
we are to get the word out far and wide on Monday to inundate Senate
offices with calls, emails, and faxes demanding action. We can easily
wait until Sunday to begin advancing along the second and third prongs
of this strategy. I'll post another diary Sunday afternoon on those
subjects (and a third on Monday morning), once this one gets off the
ground.

I'm dedicating this first diary to the issue of developing an internet-based network of support for this campaign.
When I conceived my "Awaken the Mainstream Media" campaign back in May,
it took me days of writing emails and phoning around to create such a
network. It worked, but it took more time than we have in this
instance. If Kosmopolitans want to see this work, then they'll have to
step forward to volunteer to post about this on their own blogs, and to
help to contact others who can be roped in to support us.

To reiterate: In
this first diary, I'm asking people to step forward to take charge of
some part of the bigger problem of getting the word out quickly and
connecting people into the effort. You can do that in many ways.
For example, start a thread (or a separate diary, linked in a thread)
asking people to identify which blogs they'll contact; or which radio
hosts; or local grassroots organizations; etc. Identify something that
nobody has spoken for, and take charge of it. Above all, we need to
make the jump beyond the internet to organized groups with their own
membership lists.

I'll have a lot more to say in the second and third diaries about what
kinds of arguments and evidence would be useful in calling/writing
Senators and journalists.

So who do you know? Who do you read, or listen to? Whose email lists
are you on? What local mailing/phone lists can you enlist to get the
word out to put pressure on the Senate? What part of this can you help
to organize by Sunday afternoon?

{President Bush] secretly and recklessly expanded the
government's powers in dangerous and unnecessary ways that eroded civil
liberties and may also have violated the law.

In Friday's Times, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau reported that
sometime in 2002, President Bush signed a secret executive order
scrapping a painfully reached, 25-year-old national consensus: spying
on Americans by their government should generally be prohibited, and
when it is allowed, it should be regulated and supervised by the
courts. The laws and executive orders governing electronic
eavesdropping by the intelligence agency were specifically devised to
uphold the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable searches and
seizures.

But Mr. Bush secretly decided that he was going to allow the agency to
spy on American citizens without obtaining a warrant - just as he had
earlier decided to scrap the Geneva Conventions, American law and Army
regulations when it came to handling prisoners in the war on terror....

Let's be clear about this: illegal government spying on Americans is a
violation of individual liberties, whether conditions are troubled or
not. Nobody with a real regard for the rule of law and the Constitution
would have difficulty seeing that. The law governing the National
Security Agency was written after the Vietnam War because the
government had made lists of people it considered national security
threats and spied on them. All the same empty points about effective
intelligence gathering were offered then, just as they are now, and the
Congress, the courts and the American people rejected them.

This particular end run around civil liberties is also unnecessary. The
intelligence agency already had the capacity to read your mail and your
e-mail and listen to your telephone conversations. All it had to do was
obtain a warrant from a special court created for this purpose. The
burden of proof for obtaining a warrant was relaxed a bit after 9/11,
but even before the attacks the court hardly ever rejected requests.

The special court can act in hours, but administration officials say
that they sometimes need to start monitoring large batches of telephone
numbers even faster than that, and that those numbers might include
some of American citizens. That is supposed to justify Mr. Bush's
order, and that is nonsense. The existing law already recognizes that
American citizens' communications may be intercepted by chance. It says
that those records may be retained and used if they amount to actual
foreign intelligence or counterintelligence material. Otherwise, they
must be thrown out.

President Bush defended the program yesterday, saying it was saving
lives, hotly insisting that he was working within the Constitution and
the law, and denouncing The Times for disclosing the program's
existence. We don't know if he was right on the first count; this White
House has cried wolf so many times on the urgency of national security
threats that it has lost all credibility. But we have learned the hard
way that Mr. Bush's team cannot be trusted to find the boundaries of
the law, much less respect them.

Mr. Bush said he would not retract his secret directive or halt the
illegal spying, so Congress should find a way to force him to do it.
Perhaps the Congressional leaders who were told about the program could
get the ball rolling.

This is fairly tough, coming from the NYT: "cannot be trusted to find
the boundaries of the law, much less respect them." This is going to
get rougher.

"Congressional Republicans, backed by the White House, say they are
using relief measures for the hurricane-ravaged Gulf coast to achieve a
broad range of conservative economic and social policies, both in the
storm zone and beyond." (WSJ)

I'm not. Bush suspended wage protections for reconstruction workers, meaning companies can pay low wages for any construction jobs funded by the federal government. He's considering suspending wage protections for the service industry too. He's put Karl Rove in charge of the reconstruction effort. Didn't he learn anything about appointing people with no experience to critical jobs when FEMA failed so miserably to respond to the disaster Katrina wrought? Apparently not.

So how do the Republicans plan to take advantage of the greatest natural disaster in our history and the terrible human tragedy that followed it? Well, besides suspending the prevailing wage laws - something the Republicans have been trying to get rid of for decades, Bush is also waiving some affirmative action requirements for reconstruction contractors. The Republicans in Congress are reportedly planning to pass legislation to limit victim's rights to sue, introduce vouchers for schools, eliminate environmental protection laws, and give tax breaks to companies working in the reconstruction areas.

I particularly like the sly way they've included expanded off-shore drilling and new refineries in the legislation - those are things that didn't survive the energy bill. So why not slide them in here? Well, the oil lobby is already knocking on doors and this is the least the Republicans can do to thank them for being so prompt.

What I want - desperately - is for Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities. Instead, what I'm getting is Congress using the devastation in the Gulf Coast as a real-world petri dish for trying out Republican ideologies. I just hope that 2006 changes the balance in Washington. We won't get accountability any other way.

I wonder if the people bemoaning the cost of the Gulf Coast
reconstruction take pride in the rebuilding we did after WWII in Europe
through the Marshall Plan. If they do, and if they justify the different response by exclaiming that the foreign
rebuilding was a matter of national security, then I'd really like them to explain how allowing poverty to flourish and devastation to remain unaddressed
won't have a significant negative impact on the health of our country
and ultimately our domestic security.

I read one blogger's comment referring to federal funding of the reconstruction as taking his money and giving it to someone else, morphing the reconstruction into wealth redistribution. Well, I say that if my tax burden this year goes up a hundred dollars or two in order to rebuild the Gulf Coast then so be it. There is a responsibility we have as members of this national community - a responsibility to help one another. And why in the world we should leave that up to chance, the hope that the private sector will step in and do the job fairly and completely, is beyond me.

We've been told that we're in the midst of a global war on terror and as a nation we have not been asked to sacrifice to fight and win that war. Instead, a small percentage of our fellow citizens are carrying the burden - and future generations will inherit the bill to pay for the war. For once, can our leaders ask us to do something as one? To make the sacrifice of a one-time higher tax bill in order to reconstruct the Gulf Coast and not condemn those hit by Katrina to years of poverty? I believe in the goodness of Americans and believe we'd give what was needed.

The following posts are ones that caught me as I surfed the web. Some are insightful, many informative, others provocative, most are partisan, and all thought provoking. I recommend them.

Michael Berube skewers the modern Republican party adeptly and well. Who knew that we'd ever miss the old Republican party?

James Wolcott explains better than I why it's imperative to push for answers and fix accountability now.

Emma at American Street names and challenges what she labels a southern culture that falsely distinguishes the white poor from the black poor, and leverages that distinction for political gain. The comment thread here adds substance to the post.

Paul Craig Roberts, former
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration, makes the case for impeaching the President in this extremely provocative CounterPunch post.

Billmon nails the President for using firefighters in a photo op instead of sending them into NO to rescue trapped Americans and put out the growing number of fires. He's got plenty of suggestions for additional ways to use first responders to solve Bush's PR problems.

Eric Holdeman, Director of the King County, Wash., Office of Emergency Management, provides an interesting overview of FEMA before an after Bush. The real surprise here is found in this excerpt: "This year it was announced that FEMA is to "officially" lose the
disaster preparedness function that it has had since its creation. The
move is a death blow to an agency that was already on life support. In
fact, FEMA employees have been directed not to become involved in
disaster preparedness functions, since a new directorate (yet to be
established) will have that mission." Huh.

Here's the official white house talking point on calls for accountability:

MR. McCLELLAN: What you're doing is trying to engage in a game of finger-pointing and blame-gaming. What we're trying to do is solve problems. (Press briefing 9/7/05)

This is an administration that has been steadfast in its refusal to be held accountable. They now consider accountability to be a game, a blame game of finger pointing. They reduce the necessary burden of accountability, the infamous "buck stops here" nature of leadership, to a child's game of "nyah, nyah, nyah". It's a weak response and one we can't allow.

If the administration is right and the failure in New Orleans is the fault of the local and state government and the citizens who didn't evacuate, then they should embrace the opportunity to determine accountability. That they don't tells us all we need to know.

UPDATE:Just a note that in today's press briefing, McClellan used a variation of the phrase "blame game" and the and "finger-pointing" sixteen times each.In yesterday's press briefing, he referenced "blame game" six times.The day before, he didn't use it once. Let's make sure this talking point doesnt' grow legs.

Yesterday morning, Bush announced that he was going to lead an investigation into the response to Katrina:

What I intend to do is lead a -- to lead an investigation
to find out what went right and what went wrong. (Bush in response to press question before meeting with the Cabinet.)

Except he's not really going to lead an investigation. If he were then, McClellan's answer to this reporter's question would have been "President Bush" instead of the usual tap dance away from the topic:

Who will do that? I mean, who will lead that -- will it be an outside
investigation, or White House?

MR. McCLELLAN: Terry, I think you heard from the President that we've got
to remain focused on the task at hand. We've got to remain focused on
getting help to people in the region. (In a press briefing later that day.)

In follow up questions, reporters tried to no avail to get a timeline for the investigation. McClellan parried in two ways: by suggesting that an investigation would detract from rescue and recovery and by reframing a desire for an investigation as playing the "blame game". The reporters were aggressive and consistently retorted that it was really accountability. It was nice to see an aggressive press corp. They even called out McClellan a few times, saying dismissively, "That's a talking point."

Oddly enough, on the following day (today), McClellan said that Bush was going to lead the investigation.

MR. McCLELLAN: You're trying -- well, the President is going to lead an
investigation to find out what went right and what went wrong. The
President made it very clear yesterday that we are going to look at these
issues.

Um, except that's not really what he meant. I think. Oh, shit, now I'm really confused.

Q Doesn't the President have a conflict of interest leading the investigation since what he did and did not do --

MR. McCLELLAN: I don't think that's -- I don't think that's what he was
saying, Terry. I think he was going to say he's going to lead the effort
to make sure there's a thorough investigation of things.

Let's see if I understand this. He's going to lead in making sure that there's an investigation?

What happened to the "I say what I mean" president and administration?

Undoubtedly, the administration announcement that they'll investigate what went wrong in the response to Katrina is a result of the tremendous political pressure they face in light of the suffering of our fellow citizens. I don't think the administration is the right group to investigate, but at least they're acknowledging that an investigation is needed.

Given the endless comments about the political brilliance of the administration, you would think that the announcement of an investigation might reference the grief we feel as a country over our failure to meet the basic needs of those devastated by the storm - food, water, shelter, and safety. But nope. Maybe these guys have lost their political sense of smell. Because instead of a commitment to protecting its citizens and a steely resolve to never let it happen again (Bush likes that steely resolve thing), we instead heard this:

"What I intend to do is lead a -- to lead an investigation to find out
what went right and what went wrong. And I'll tell you why. It's very
important for us to understand the relationship between the federal
government, the state government and the local government when it comes
to a major catastrophe. And the reason it's important is, is that we
still live in an unsettled world. We want to make sure that we can
respond properly if there's a WMD attack or another major storm. And so
I'm going to find out over time what went right and what went wrong." (Bush)

I could slam Bush for not caring about the people who suffered but I think he cares. I could slam him for paying more attention to the boundaries of federal power than the needs of Americans, and I'm tempted, but I'll leave it to you to decide if his focus is off. My point here is that the vaunted political genius of Bush/Rove is sorely missing here. And I think it's been off for a while. The campaign for privatizing social security is a waste of money. A defiant insistence on a five week vacation. The refusal to meet Cindy Sheehan and prevent the birth of a new anti-war movement. The failure to visit Ohio when so many soldiers from the same unit died on the same day. Giving a prime time speech to defend his Iraq policies and not offering one new thought. These are all political gaffes. I think they're losing their touch.

Of course, that doesn't mean that we, the loyal opposition, ease up. It means that his is the time to keep the pressure on - in getting all of the Roberts documents, in fighting the repeal of the estate tax, in protecting the courts from an extremist bias, in demanding a clear and executable exit strategy from Iraq, in ensuring that our veterans are cared for, in the follow through on the Katrina evacuees and the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast. Despite the endless laments from the conservative punditry, we do have clear goals. We need to keep the pressure on.

In his Washington Post column today, Dan Froomkin provides an excellent parsing of the classic response of the Bush administration to political crisis:

Multiple appearances by the president in
controlled environments in which he can appear leader-like.

Extensive use of Air Force One and a massive deployment of spinners.

No change in policy required.

No admission of error.

Attack critics rather than defending against their criticism.

Throw up chaff to muddle the issue and throw the press off the scent.

Regular public expressions of outrage over the politicization of the
issue and of those who would play the "blame game."

Ignore the administration's own politicization of the issue and its own efforts to allocate blame.

Froomkin goes on to explain why applying this strategy is a bit trickier with the poor response to Katrina. Let's hope that this time the strategy of misdirection and personal attack doesn't work. After all, this is about our national security. And if the public - even the Dems - saw the administration taking ownership of the federal failures in the past few days, they'd be more supportive and more open to discussing local failures.

Today, I've heard a number of local officials from the Gulf Coast as well as plenty of pundits repeat the mantra, "Now is not the time to point fingers".

Are they getting their talking points from Chertoff or what?

We HAVE to point fingers now. The Bush administration is stellar at avoiding accountability. Let's not help them avoid this one by demurely declaring that now is the time to focus on the rescue and recovery. We're actually capable of doing more than one thing at a time. So let's figure where things went wrong - bi-partisan commission, whatever. Because I'm quite sure that while some responsibility is local, it's not the friggin' mayor's fault that the federal government failed in its fundamental job of protecting its citizens.

So. I was channel surfing through the cable news shows and came across Larry King, suck up extraordinaire, interviewing George Sr. and Barbara. No newsworthy information of course - more of a commercial for how great their son is. He has a strong heart, he's determined, he feels people's pain, he's a man of faith. Uh huh. Parents get to brag on their kids. Of course, when the kid is the President and their bragging on Larry King while the devastation from Katrina is still being uncovered, it's a bit much. I hit my threshold when Barbara said that she'd talked to some evacuees in the AstroDome and they told her that when Bush Jr. flew over the area, it made all the difference in their lives.

REALLY?!? Imagine. Your home city is flooded and you're stranded on a spit of highway. You have no food or water for days. People around you are dying. When food and water are finally delivered, you hear promises of rescue, which doesn't happen for another day. Or two. Or maybe you followed the directive to go the sports arena because you didn't have the means to get out of New Orleans. You suffer heat, dehydration, filth, and violence. You're scared, thirsty, hungry, and locked in. You're promised evacuation. And when the buses come, they're turned away. Finally, you get on a bus in the same clothes you've been wearing for days. You ride for hours in order to be safe, to have food, water and shelter. Whether you come from the highway or the arena, would you really say upon learning that Bush flew over the Gulf Coast that it made all the difference in your life? I think not.

I might excuse this as a poor attempt by a mother to support her son. I was working my way towards that view when I heard that in a different news segment Barbara said: "So many people in the Astrodome were underprivileged anyway so this is working really well for them."

Are you kidding me? This is the statement of someone so fundamentally out of touch with the common man that they really shouldn't let her near a microphone. Does she really think that living in an arena, having gone through a terribly traumatic ordeal, having lost the few possession you had and possibly lost people you love... does she think that's better than living in poverty? That living in a public space on the charity of others with no privacy, no ownership, hundreds of miles from the place you know, sleeping next to strangers in the noise of thousands under lights that are always on... this is better than living in poverty?

I'm ashamed that someone so callous and assuming and uninformed and disconnected was our country's first lady.

How satisfying is it that Bush is finally taking the devastation in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast seriously. That he's sending in resources, committing the federal government to help its citizens?

Well, it would be a lot more satisfying if the motive for doing so weren't political. Suddenly, the administration is getting serious about its duty to protect its citizens now that it realizes that its own agenda is at risk. Yup. Threaten their agenda of ending the estate tax and privatizing social security and suddenly the desperation of those ravaged by the storm matters.

Glad to know what motivates this administration to act. It's not a commitment to a "culture of life" or else they would have acted to save the lives of those who were dying in the streets of New Orleans. It is, however, the preservation of power and the continued implementation of an ideological agenda disconnected from reality. I wish I found that surprising.

Info on the administration's sudden wake-up call in the face of political damage can be found in this New York Times article.

LIke so many other citizens, I've been dismayed at the poor performance of our government in New Orleans and the Gulf. I share the shocked response of so many: "this is America?" I've read news reports and endless blog entries and this is the one that stayed with me.

From Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, I read this email from one of his readers. I've excerpted it here giving you the start and end of the post, but you should click over and read the whole thing. Really - go read it.

"I've considered myself a socially libertarian,
fiscally conservative Republican for a very long time. I got along with
the idea that I wasn't going to get a whole lot of help. College
wouldn't be free. Job training would cost money and time. And I'm
probably a decent example of up-from-not-much.

But after
watching what's happening in New Orleans-an American city that I've
loved, visited and have always wanted to return to - I can't ever vote
for these people again......I've had it. I'm done. And if the other bunch of
assholes can't figure out that what's important is that babies don't
starve to death here (and I'm not talking some metaphorical goo-goo
thing with school lunches and welfare, but real, actual starving) and
we get people out of harm's way, we'll get rid of them too. And so on.

Because
this is about leadership, not about bitching on CNN how no one's in
charge, or listening to Peggy Noonan furrow her brow at the Governor's
performance, or bragging that we've sent in one National Guardsman for
every 200 people, or actually having the audacity to say that "we had
no idea the levees would break."

Today, I saw my country
favorably compared to Indonesia and Thailand, (always our traditional
benchmarks of infrastructural success) while the elderly die of thirst
in the street. We sneered at France when this happened during a heat
wave.

I've been remarkably remiss in posting here - largely because I continue to use my blog time to volunteer for a great progressive candidate. BUT - I miss blogging and I don't want this to die from disuse. So I'm making a commitment to Sunday blogging and hope that it's enough to keep readers returning.

To those of you who have continued to click by and frown when you see no new posts, thanks for your loyalty. I hope you'll keep coming by, despite the fact that I'm breaking the first rule of blogging - frequent, relevant posts.

I'm offlien for the next four days, so while I'm gone I recommend you go read Damn Liberals. You may know this blogger as DailyKos and MYDD commenter Michael in Chicago. He's quickly becoming a favorite for me - so go check him out.

I'm tired of reading about how divided the Democrats are - when the Republicans have fissures in their party over the war in Iraq, immigration reform, the exploding deficit, and the increasing heft of the religious extremists.

Google "Democrats divided" and you'll get over 800 hits, with articles from media outlets in London, Moscow, and all of those here in the states. Just this week, we were treated to a WaPo article on the Democrats divide over the Iraq war - this in a week when Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel repeated his call for a timeline for pulling the troops and virtually labeled Bush a loser. The great Democratic divide is a media construct. Sure, we're not a single-minded entity. But the Dems are no more divided than the Pubs. We're just have a more vocal netroots community - one that hold the party accountable instead of marching in lockstep while we chant out the party talking points.

We need to challenge the media when it trots out the divided Dems theme and remind them that the great divide is actually democracy in action - different people with different ideas about how to solve the problems our country faces, in dialog and working together to find the right solution. Sure, we've got our DINOs that we diss and we hold our leaders accountable for abandoning principle in the cautious hope of not rocking the boat and losing their seat. But so do the Pubs. There's nothing happening on the left that isn't happening on the right when it comes to a lack of unity on what to do in Iraq. So let's not let the media pain us as divided while pretending the Pubs are in the midst of a Vulcan mind meld.

On a fairly regular basis, we hear Republican leaders like Bush and Cheney defend the war in Iraq on the basis of the benefits to women there. I've posted on this before, noting that I don't buy their convenient embrace of women's rights. Well I was right to be suspicious. Just read the following statement made by a loyal member of the neocon movement.

I mean, one hopes that the Iraqis protect women's social rights as much
as possible. It certainly seems clear that in protecting the political
rights, there's no discussion of women not having the right to vote. I
think it's important to remember that in the year 1900, for example, in
the United States, it was a democracy then. In 1900, women did not
have the right to vote. If Iraqis could develop a democracy that
resembled America in the 1900s, I think we'd all be thrilled. I mean,
women's social rights are not critical to the evolution of democracy.
We hope they're there. I think they will be there. But I think we need
to put this into perspective. Former Middle East specialist for the CIA, Reuel Marc Gerecht (Meet the Press, 8/21/05)

Hmm. I wonder what kind of outcry there would be if he said "Kurds social rights aren't critical to the evolution of democracy"? Quite a loud one, I think. But here we see that the equality of women in society is seen not as a central component of democracy but as a nice add-on. Screw him and those who would comfortably allow half the population to be excluded from participating in democracy. Screw him and those who would abandon Iraqi women to the oppressive male rule of Sharia, to the loss of such fundamental rights that they can't protect themselves, own their own property, escape an abusive husband, avoid physical harm and even death for behaviors we take for granted.

Girls going to school doesn't count for much if they are subordinate citizens without the protections and rights afforded men. If women in Iraq aren't given equal rights in Iraq then any claim that we've brought democracy there is an empty one.

These guys don't value women as equal citizens, as equal human beings with the same self-evident right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that men have.

They see the rights of women as good propaganda and a negotiating point to be abandoned as necessary. Crap like this, dished out on one of the top cable news shows and minimally challenged by the other men on the show, reminds me that there's a reason the ERA never passed here, that the ERA was the incentive that brought together the social and religious conservatives. Bush can campaign with a "W is for Women" theme, but it's really for war. Not just war against terrorists - but in some ways, war against women.

As an FYI, Reuel Marc Gerecht has his conservative credentials in order. He's a neocon, serving as the Director of the Middle East Initiative at the
Project for the New American Century -- PNAC is the heart of the neocon ideological movement. He's also a resident fellow at the American
Enterprise Institute - a leading conservative think tank. He's a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard. And he's a regular talking head on cable news shows. He's got hefty academic credentials and was a CIA analyst for nine years (left in 94). And he letting us know what the neocons really think.